


juego del pato

by AnarkyLantern



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 03:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13449939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnarkyLantern/pseuds/AnarkyLantern
Summary: As Ernesto begins to fade away, an angry widow confronts him.





	juego del pato

Coco and Big Hero 6 belongs to Disney-Pixar. I also have a sizable Coco collection that has remained and will remain Ernesto-free. I don’t think I’ll ever not despise him as a character but I think I understand him a little now. This has been stewing since a Twitter q&a revealed that Ernesto was partially based on the closeted pianist Liberace. It’s just tonight, though, that I saw Imelda being the one to confront Ernesto on this.

 

 

There were a thousand worse things as the forgetting process began. There was the statue in town being left to rot until one day it disappeared, presumably stolen for the metals it was made from- although enough defacement of other de La Cruz artifacts made it still within the realm of possibility that it was stolen for that reason instead.

No more tours, no more merchandise (even clearance stores couldn’t move it), and his body began to revert to the condition of his original death. His creative contributions had always been suspect since the infamous poison scene was the only thing he had been proven to have written himself. The Rivera letters had only been the beginning. A wax cylinder recording of Recuérdame shortly surfaced after in a storage locker belonging to some man named Chicharrón. The singer couldn’t be positively identified but it certainly wasn’t de La Cruz and Coco, the elderly matron of the Rivera family, insisted it was her papa in the short time before she passed away.

Within a few short years, de La Cruz’s albums were out of print and there was an indication that people were also dumping the copies they had. There was no collector’s market either. Morbidity only went *so* far. He remained on iTunes but his records kept getting pushed down as more and more new covers of *his* songs came out- Ernesto would never stop thinking of them that way because of what he had done to obtain them.

He could feel some gringo at the very moment drawing a protest sign of Senor Trump dressed as him and wearing his famous expression. Yes, it was a form of remembrance but it was hardly an ofrenda and maybe a little disrespectful. 

In any cause, his end was near, and he couldn’t even count on a peaceful fading away in the community of the forgotten. Even they shunned him. His chihuahuas were huddled against him, but that’s dogs for you. They have more loyalty than sense.

And then, he felt the shadow of Pepita loom over him. Ernesto vaguely remembered being afraid of her and even more so of her owner. Imelda Rivera was a terrifying woman and Ernesto braced for impact as she got off the alebrije.

Yet none came. She just stood staring at him, her glass eyes unreadable. And then she spoke, in a soft and bewildered voice.  
“I don’t understand. You and Hector were hermanos in all but blood. He even took you in when your own familia threw...”

At this, Ernesto stood up, the full extent of his original state of death now visible to her and his eyes somehow blazing, “You have no idea what it’s like. At worst, you had relatives who disapproved of who you loved but never WHAT... All I had was music...”

She smacked him. “You had us! You knew full well we didn’t care and yet, because of you... I-i would have negotiated a good deal for the use of Hector’s music...” Imelda broke into a sob.

Ernesto just sat back down, his eyes cold, “There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel bad about any of this.”

Imelda looked down at him, all too eager for the challenge. “You didn’t see how terrified Miguel was when he came out. THAT could have been your legacy, that you made the world a little easier for boys like him and you. Perhaps you would have even been able to write your own songs had you been less guarded.” 

Ernesto didn’t respond, so the two of them stared each other down until he faded away in a more ashy than golden mist. It wasn’t a terribly satisfying sight but Imelda took some joy in having witnessed it. 

She then picked up the chihuahuas, making comforting noises for them, and put them in the basket she was carrying. Perhaps Miguel’s new brother-in-law would like them? Imelda wasn’t sure how exactly intermarriage worked in the land of the dead but she had heard nothing but good things about this Tadashi Hamada.


End file.
